Gonzo has a watch now. Swiss watchmaker Oris and Disney’s The Muppets announced the ProPilot X Gonzo Edition on Wednesday, September 2, a hand-wound mechanical watch built on the ProPilot X Calibre 115. The big trick sits at 12 o’clock: wind it, and Gonzo’s face appears across the mainspring.
Oris calls that a first in Swiss watchmaking. Tiny etchings lasered into the edge of the 1.8-meter coil line up as the spring tightens, forming Gonzo’s grin. The image drifts apart again as the power runs down, the way the tension builds before one of his cannonball stunts. The barrel is skeletonized so you can watch it happen.
What does the Gonzo Edition watch look like?
It’s a 44mm multi-piece titanium case with a titanium bracelet, sapphire crystal, and 100 meters of water resistance. The skeletonized dial runs a blue-to-red-to-yellow gradient pulled from Gonzo’s fur and his wardrobe. A rainbow laser-textured dial ring shifts color depending on the light.
The power reserve hand is shaped like a chili, a nod to one of his classic shirts. It tracks a 10-day reserve, and the indicator counts down 10 “GREAT” days.
Calibre 115 is one of Oris’s most complicated movements, developed by its in-house engineers. Its non-linear power reserve indicator gets more precise as the watch gets closer to needing a wind.
This is the third watch Oris has made with Disney’s The Muppets, after editions for Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Lukas Bühlmann, Oris’s head of design, worked on all three. He’s been at Oris for 11 years and has led design for four. He says the goal each time is to build the fun into the movement itself, not just the case.
What did Gonzo say about it?
Oris asked him how he’s been spending his time. “Time is a construct!” he said, loading himself into a blue and yellow stunt cannon. He’s working through a water-skiing ballet set to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and hasn’t perfected the shark choreography in the Summer section yet. I need to see the shark choreography.
The release also runs through his résumé. He performed his first act on The Muppet Show in 1976, eating a rubber tire to Flight of the Bumblebee. He’s since caught a cannonball, flown from a bunch of carnival balloons, and played Charles Dickens. He did all his own stunts. “One of my arms is still longer than the other,” he once said.
Oris describes itself as an independent Swiss company with a built-in refusal to take itself too seriously, and that’s the thread running through all three Muppets collaborations.
Swiss retail price is CHF 8,500. The watch is available in September. The reference is 01 115 7759 7180-Set.
Source: Disney press release
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